This invention is directed to adhesive bandages of the type generally used for first aid and surgical dressings and which are usually referred to as "strip" type bandages wherein an absorbent protective pad or gauze dressing is carried by an adhesive-coated flexible backing. Such adhesive bandages are so well known and staple items in a first aid kit or medicine cabinet that they need not be discussed in great detail.
While such bandages are used for a multitude of skin irritations and wounds, the present invention is in particular directed to their use as a dressing for flap-like or "U-shaped" wounds and the invention will accordingly be discussed hereinafter with reference to such wounds.
With flap wounds, care must be taken when removing or changing the bandage so as not to reopen or otherwise harm the wound and thereby set back the healing process. While this may not generally be a serious problem with physicians, nurses and other medically oriented users who are of course highly skilled in such procedures, it presents a very real problem to the ordinary layman attending to his own first aid needs.
In a sense, it can be said there is a right way and a wrong way to remove an adhesive bandage from a flap wound. If the tape is peeled back in the direction of the flap wound, the wound is very likely to be reopened, much as one peels a banana. This would particularly be true if there is even slight adherance or adhesion of the healing skin to the protective pad, causing it to be peeled back away from the wound as the bandage is itself peeled away. On the other hand, if the adhesive is peeled back in the opposite direction away from the direction of the flap wound, this danger will be obviated. The problem however is remembering the direction of the flap wound, i.e. whether the adhesive bandage should be peeled away from right-to-left or from left-to-right. This of course presupposes that the user is even knowledgable enough to know and understand that there is in fact a right way and a wrong way to remove a dressing from such wounds.